Dementia

It’s been suspected for a long time now that the planet may have Alzheimer’s. With an attention span of – oh look, squirrel! – and a collective IQ of around half-past eight, the developed world has lived beyond its useful life and is entering the twilight years. It’s like we only keep the old boy on, letting him pretend he still has a job, because it’s easier than watching the distress it causes when he occasionally gets to glimpse cold, hard reality. In the face of all the evidence to the contrary, western governments and their media allies and their detached academics and their blinkered peaceniks insist we can all peacefully coexist and not simply endure enforced multiculturalism but thrive on the diversity. In fact the answer to the challenges posed by diversity is always more diversity... but only for the diverse.

The old empire – whatever you have been indoctrinated to believe in hindsight, by possibly well-meaning but culturally suicidal, agenda-driven minds – was, in a pre-technological world, ‘a very good thing’. Possibly the biggest leap forward in every sense since the Romans (Are they evil now? It’s hard to keep track.) yet all we hear is “What did the British ever do for us?” (Fill in your own long list.) The end is nigh, the doom-mongers used to say, in expectation of a godly apocalypse. They may be right, but the fall of civilisation will come not from god, not even from believers in gods, but from civilisation itself.

Rough men, brave men, went to war and died to keep their countries free from brutal tyrannies but the real tyrants now are those who heed not what was done for them and have no regard for sober history. University students – young people who should be opening their mind to all possibilities – are shutting down debate on campus after campus. A recent, orchestrated walk out from an appearance by contrarian Katie Hopkins: showed absolutely no concern for those who had turned up to hear her out. The no-platforming of anybody who holds views which don’t accord with the new orthodoxy goes way beyond simply refusing to listen; consider the hounding out of office and reputation of Tim Hunt by a concerted and confected charge of sexism and ask whether this is the action of rational, thinking, enlightened humans.

Then there is the insistence by the current – this month’s - Shadow Environment Secretary that referring to practitioners of an almost entirely male profession by the term ‘fishermen’ is lazy and unthinking sexism. I wonder how Harriet Harman feels about that? And examine the almost incredible revelation that Labour MEPs support the repatriation of jihadis to Britain; for every one they rehabilitate, dozens more will be radicalised to take their place. I say ‘almost incredible’ but set against the daily outpouring of utter fuckwittery that typifies the current state of the left in turmoil it passes for normal.

World Leaders discuss Climate Change in Paris

Meanwhile the world leaders are meeting to see how far to push the climate agenda, aided and abetted by the sheep who clamour for yet more restrictions on their freedoms. So, as the lights start to flicker and die across the civilised world, the left will use the chaos to regroup and usher in the islamic agents of the future caliphate and the sun will finally set on the glory that was the European Enlightenment. Welcome to the new Dark Ages; and hope your own dementia takes you first. 

Easy Living

Watching the not-so-slow death of Labour by a thousand cuts_[typo] is a spectacle in turns amusing, horrifying, incredible and at times as predictable as a socialist calling everybody they disagree with ‘Tory scum’. Will they let Corbyn hang on over Christmas? Certainly the consensus seems to be that he’ll be gone after next May’s local elections, by which time Labour will be little more than a gibbering basket case, hoping to fail its Atos work capability assessment and stay on the sick forever. But it wasn’t always this way.

Once, Labour was the thrusting, purposeful party of the working classes. Hardy men who built ships, mined coal or withstood the blast of furnaces, pouring steel to improve the world beyond measure. A mixture of work ethic and pride in nationhood, such men would look disdainfully down at the soft-bellied career politicians who now seek to continue the legacy long after the workers’ battles have been won. Of course, contrary to the party mantras of oppression and penury, many of the old guard have risen far above their origins and now inhabit the leafier suburbs in their retirement.

One such working lad made good was out in the garden a few weeks ago and he noticed one of his neighbours – a typical Tory, made rich on the labour of others – lounging in his hammock in the dappled shade of a late summer’s day. He was sipping a cool beer and listening to the radio as he perused a catalogue of accessories for his BMW, but all the while his wife was working. One minute she was pruning bushes, then doing the weeding, then sweeping the patio before hanging out the washing

A short while later she began struggling with a rusty manual lawnmower to maintain the sward in pristine condition and the hammock-bound ingrate just carried on listening and drinking, not even asking whether his wife wanted a break, or some assistance. The horny-handed son of toil was incensed by this callous disregard for a worker’s plight and although he wished to respect another’s need for privacy, felt he nevertheless had to intervene. When the neighbour’s wife had gone back indoors he wandered over to the fence and stepped up on a bench to berate the idle one.

"Here, look at the state of you!" he began, “There you sit, lazing about, relaxing and getting drunk in the middle of the day while your poor wife has been grafting all day!” The lounging neighbour put down his catalogue and looked over with an air of amused indulgence at the angry man shouting at him. “It’s a disgrace, I tell you. A marriage should be a partnership, equal shares in everything, but here you sit, with your beer and your music, like a fat cat boss, while she does all the work. You should be bloody well hung!"

Tory boy gazed back, steadily before hitching himself up on his elbow, taking another sip and replying, "I am, old boy, I am... That's why she's mowing the lawn.”

Crazy!

Another day, another nail in the coffin lid of ‘The New Politics’ promised by Jeremy Corbyn and his merry band of misled men. Surely somebody must have known about John McDonnell’s planned waving of Mao Zedong’s Little Red Booky Wook over the despatch box? One story is that it was a committee decision to approve the act but surely one of the first rules of political opposition is - Don't let your own cunning stunt become the story. “But it was just a joke!” exclaimed the party worthies, cringing as they did so. The ruination of the Labour Party continues apace.

But, here’s the real joke; so committed are the faithful to the untried ideals of JC the new messiah that they fall straight into every single trap the Tories set for them. It must be like catching passenger pigeons in the Old Wild West... or dynamiting fish in a very small barrel. I keep expecting the stage hypnotist to count to three, snap his fingers and bring them, blinking, back into the real world to find the audience pointing and laughing. But no, the more we laugh, the more the big red bear dances.

For a party trying to regain credibility after the Edstone fiasco you would think that Labour would be doing their utmost to appear, if not electable, at least sane. During the short-lived Miliband era they opposed every austerity measure, insisting that the economy could be rescued while still borrowing more than could ever be paid back. The voters showed them what they thought of that. Under the last Labour government the creeping shackles of cultural thought control made criminals out of people for expressing opinions; the meekly offended trying to get their inheritance early, perhaps?

In a reversal of democratic principles, minorities progressively attained greater rights than the majority. Who knows what the voters thought of that? And of course it was Labour who ushered in the miserable failures of mass immigration and multiculturalism; and we know exactly what most voters really think of that. Yet still the bubble insulates politicians from the consequences of their thoughts and deeds. At least Ed’s people kept up the pretence that they thought they were in with a chance, but under Corbyn even his own cabinet cringe every time he opens his mouth and quickly brief to disown him.

But which is which?

At the height of China’s Cultural Revolution the notorious Gang of Four were responsible for some of the most notorious acts of the revolutionary party. It eventually led to their downfall but they are still remembered to this day. Will Corbyn’s political revolutionaries be likewise recalled in decades to come? As their Greatest Tits catalogue continues to build it is inevitable their bizarre performances will be fondly discussed in the future. We have a tradition of looking after the underdog so, bringing laughter to millions, Corbyn’s Crazy Gang will forever hold a special place in the nation’s heart.

Everything to do with islam

Everybody is, finally, talking out in the open about how to defeat ISIS, ISIL, IS or Daesh, or whatever name you want use to dignify the barbaric rabble; much like the EEC, EU, Common Market chameleon, there is a name to suit every prejudice. But the one thing they are still not saying is what ordinary people warned about decades ago and see every day written across the headlines and carved out of their back streets. This is not some new horror for the twenty-first century, it is the same crusade and war on the west that seems to be islam’s entire reason for existence.

We won’t defeat islam – since 1095 we have been trying – all we can do is beat it down with a big stick and keep it pruned relentlessly. The idea that Jeremy Corbyn has of negotiating with them is ludicrous; the only thing we have that they want is our lives; for them nothing else matters other than establishing brutal, primitive islamic martial subjugation throughout the world. It’s their way, or the highway to hell, so Corbyn’s only negotiating stance would be abject surrender from the outset and a wish for a mercifully swift end. Keep believing you can achieve that, Jezzer, meanwhile the grown-ups are talking.

Other voices are pointing out how little the radicals from Europe that have plotted and carried out their murderous acts have to do with the religion of peace. They lived decadent western lifestyles then one day decided to up and wage war and simply hijack islam for the purpose of headlines. This isn’t real islam, they say, but how would we know, given that every act of brutality is precede with rabid cries of allahu akbar? Anjem Choudary, who is also known for having lived a wild (for which, read ‘normal’) youth is eloquently insistent that allah’s is the only law and that the world will one day belong to his followers.

You see, it is exactly what it looks like. If anything it is the slender majority of hitherto peaceful muslims who are living a lie. Coming over here, trying to make their religion look like ‘our’ religion, living a skewed version of the religion of submission... How dare they try and integrate? If anything it's the westernised muslims and their decadent lives who are 'nothing to do with islam', but they were useful breeding cells. Now their children’s children are merely reclaiming the certainty that tomorrow belongs to them. No wonder comparisons are frequently made with Nazism – the fanaticism, the brutality, the absolute conviction that all others are inferior.

As somebody else tweeted, “If Paris proved one thing it was that open EU borders are an open invitation to murderous Islamic barbarians.” And last night it was Brussels under siege. Where will they be tomorrow? Make no mistake this is the same millennium-old war we can never win unless the world is rid of islam itself – and nobody has the stomach or stamina for that. The best we can do is stamp out the flames and wait, vigilant, for when it starts all over again in a few generations. In the meantime, putting any muslim in any position of responsibility anywhere in the western world is tantamount to heaving the big wooden horse right into the city square. Call me what you like, but either we cull them or they annihilate us.

Massive Cuts

A commentator has said that if the British police had to mount an operation such as that deployed against the Mali hotel jihadists they would have been cut to shreds, for lack of numbers, up-to-date arms and training. There is set to be a shortage of teachers because, given the sort of publicity they receive and the ridiculous amount of responsibility with no backing from authority when the savages they try to control turn against them, recruiting targets are not being met. The NHS cannot attract, train and retain sufficient British-born staff, so chooses to use foreign nurses of sometimes uncertain provenance. And the junior doctors have voted 98% in favour of strike action.

It all comes back to the same thing; priorities. In the estimation of most observers all the above can be fixed with money, what a shame it’s rationed. It has to be though; money-rationing is how economies work. There is only so much to go around – no matter what the left hand side of humanity believes – so all who want state cash have to compete for it. And the way that competition is staged is for each recipient of the tax dollar to demonstrate how utterly dependent we all are on their services by withdrawing those services.

I wish there were more strikes, sometimes. Every time public servants go on strike the rest of us have to decide how we deal with it and unsurprisingly, those who deal with it the most easily are those who actually pay for it. Given the paucity of provision those who can will adapt to circumstances and find alternatives. In other words, reliance on the state for all or part of your needs exposes you to the risks posed by what they used to call ‘industrial action’, but given that most of industry is paying its own way these days the term is, like many benefit bunnies, largely redundant.

Money, like common sense, is not in limitless supply; when there is not enough money some have to go without. But have you ever noticed that among those in work, who choose to have only the lifestyle they can afford to support, both money and common sense, while maybe not in abundance, are nevertheless in sufficiency? The more people need the state, the more strike action hurts them, especially so when administrators choose to apply the cuts not to indulgent, back-office functions or self-publicity but to frontline staff.

This principle applies just as much to government itself as to the services it purports to provide. Ministers with departments in charge of large budgets for nebulous affairs. Vanity projects and inefficient procurement. Layers of unaccountable management and consultancy far above and long detached from the day-to-day business of just getting on with business. The long litany of abandoned causes shows, in its trail of wreckage that national administrations are just as guilty of profligacy as those they point the finger at. And bestriding all of this like an expensive behemoth is the massive waste of money that is the totally undemocratic, beyond-the-law bureaucracy of the European Union.

Looking for massive cuts? Look no further...

Once an agency is so big it no longer needs to beg for money but demand it, you have to wake up and realise its sense of entitlement knows no bounds. The gigantic millstone round the necks of the productive economies of Europe is so wedded to its ‘principles’ that even the defence of European citizens is secondary to sticking firmly to a discredited ideal. The insufferable arrogance of the EU as regularly revealed by Jean Claude Juncker is the single most compelling reason to leave. If you’re looking to make savings, if you’re looking for massive ‘cuts’, look no further than Brussels.

Engineered for Health

The ‘Junior’ Doctors have agreed to go on strike over something or other. I‘m Past caring, if I’m honest, I’m planning a spectacular, no-coming-back-from-that heart attack on my sixtieth birthday... or maybe my seventieth, if my knees hold out that long. Given my current track record I reckon I’ll last till then without needing anything more than paracetamol and ibuprofen and after that, fuck it, time to go. But don’t worry, I’ll keep the place nice and tidy and make sure I collapse into a wheelie-bin bag so nobody needs go to any trouble.

There’s a lot to be learned, to be a doctor, but they’re not geniuses; it’s far less stressful, more lucrative and probably more exciting to make your living as a scientist, or a financier, or an engineer. Which reminds me of an engineer friend of mine who tried to register with a GP a few years ago, following a house move. Nightmare, it was; couldn’t register without an appointment, couldn’t get an appointment without being both ill... and registered. Realising that the balance of supply and demand was out of whack he studied a few medical text books then mischievously set up his own surgery in direct competition.

He took out an ad in the local paper which stated that he would charge £50 for a cure, but prepared to put his money where his mouth was, offered to pay back £100 if the cure didn’t work. Naturally the local GP was incensed – all those years at medical school for this upstart quack to come along and trivialise the noble art of the physician. He visited my mate and declared that he had lost his sense of taste. The engineer ostentatiously reached up and took a jar marked ‘Cure All’ and administered three drops onto the doctor’s tongue.

The doc spat out the ‘medicine’ and said "This is not medicine, it's petrol!" to which the engineer replied “Congratulations, you have your taste back. That will be £50, please.” The doctor paid up and hastily left the surgery, vowing to enact revenge and get his money back. A few days later he returned to the surgery claiming he had suffered a loss of memory. The engineer took down the Cure All and began to fill an eye-dropper, at which the doctor shouted “That’s not medicine, it’s petrol!” The engineer looked steadily back and declared “Excellent. You seem to have regained your memory. Fifty pounds, please.”

The doctor left in a fury of embarrassment. How could a mere engineer, a spit and spanner monkey, put one over on him, with his lifetime of medical training? But after a few days he decided to try one more time to recover the £100 he had lost. This time he donned a disguise and shambled into the surgery, bumping into doors and declaring his eyesight had become exceedingly poor. The engineer held his hands open and said, “I’m sorry, I have no medicine for that. Please accept this £100 note.”

The doctor punched the air in triumph and turned to leave, but then he looked more closely at the note. “But wait, this isn’t a £100 note it’s just a fifty!” The engineer smiled and said “But that’s amazing news; your eyesight has returned. That will be Fifty pounds, please.”

Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em

Frank Spencer and I have something in common – compared to the Labour Party we are the very epitome of competence, meticulous planning and iron discipline. Captain Corbyn, like a day-skipper attempting a global circumnavigation on the basis of ‘how hard can it be?’ is managing to steer his rusting hulk of a party ever closer to the jagged rocks of electoral oblivion and just like watching Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em it is in equal parts hilarious and embarrassing. As his own party briefs against him, cabinet hopefuls are forced to do the solidarity waltz on a slippery dance floor.

Diane Abbott got to do her “no, no, no” response in her Maggie Thatcher voice on Radio Four’s PM when she told Eddie Mair how unfairly Jeremy Corbyn had been treated. Caroline Flint tag-teamed her to deliver a marginally more credible defence and both managed to clumsily sidestep the issue of Ken Livingsone’s appointment as co-chair of Labour’s defence review  without asking Angela (Anne?) Eagle if she minded. Ken insulted sensitive Kevan Jones after what he over-sensitively took to be a challenge to his own competence and the social meeja decided at some point that Ken’s ‘see a psychiatrist’ jibe was equally despicable as racism.

When even the feeble Simon 'Titty' Danczuk can openly brief against you, there has to come a point when you know you’re in trouble: "He's not got any authority and it's becoming an issue for him." Danczuk said and then a whole series of other discontented Labour figures popped up to grumble about the economy, Trident, shoot-to-kill and Corbyn’s former associations with disreputable figures. Captioning a photograph of the Labour leader with Hilary Benn, one newspaper even ventured to suggest this was a picture of both the current and the next party boss. What else is going to unravel before Jeremy is brought, head-in-a-sack to the star chamber?

Then the House of Lords, in a show of utter contempt for its elected colleagues demonstrated its own slide into irrelevance by voting – against all logic – to support the giving of votes to 16-year olds. The raising of the school leaving age to eighteen and the ridiculous extent to which young people are fawned over bodes ill for wise judgement. When the majority left school at fifteen the voting age was twenty-one. Six years of working for a living before getting the franchise. I see nothing whatsoever to suggest that giving a vote to part-formed humans who have not yet finished basic schooling is a sound idea.

Government is EASY!

Tony Blair often used the soundbite ‘joined-up government’ even while consultative cock-ups were being hastily spun as triumphs. Compared to the state of play in government at the moment, his administration looks like a high watermark of coordinated policy. But to look at the current confused and disorganised state of politics in general the possibility of connecting the dots looks ever more remote. It’s as if we already have children making all the rules.

Petition This!

If you saw a man beating himself to death with his own shovel you would have to at least record it and get it up on Youtube. You might not want to wade in and stop him - after all he could have your eye out - but you’d sure as hell want to show the world the staggeringly mental thing you’d just witnessed. Naturally it would go viral and attract a list of comments on the event; how awful, what drove him to it, why didn’t you do something to help? Etc. But would you seriously expect anybody to cheer him on? To genuinely offer support and if necessary assistance to aid him in coming to his bloody end?

In a perverse display of ideology before logic all the forces of the establishment – which used to be thought of as overbearingly conservative in its even-handed refusal to bend rules for all but the most influential who, by definition can do what the hell they like – is bending over backwards to hasten western culture to its own demise. And the means to this end may be actually worse than beating ourselves to death with a shovel – inviting somebody else to wield said shovel.

Following the Paris atrocities and now the various scares in Germany a UK e-petition to close our borders tight shut received over four hundred thousand signatures in a little over 48 hours. As clear an indication of concern as any reasonable person would need. But, bizarrely, a counter petition to open up the borders, while attracting fifty times fewer supporters, has been launched. Given the undemocratic behaviour of all EU administrations in recent years it is entirely to be expected that credence will be given to the few and the fears of the many will simply be ignored.

If this were the EU referendum and the balance of voting was 50-to-1 for Brexit, I wouldn’t put it past the new order to see that as a validation for their decision to remain. What on earth is going on? The Corbynistas genuinely seem to believe they can talk their way to some form of peace against forces who wish only to annihilate us. In contrast with English fans singing La Marseillaise, Turkish fans booed during the one-minute silence at their match, in Paris more shooting broke out overnight and a mere thirty muslims turned up to condemn the attacks. Isn’t it time we got a grip and called a spade a spade?

Jihadi Yes?

One of the latest lunacies flying around t’internet is the phrase ‘terrorism has no religion’. I think the evidence points very much to the opposite. Most terrorism over the centuries seems to have been committed by people with sincerely held religious beliefs and the religion du jour is, of course, our dear friend the religion of stabbing and burning and raping and beheading and stoning in the name of, let me see... allah, the godhead of islam. No matter how many times the placid politicians of the west try to say this has nothing to do with islam, the perpetrators would beg to differ.

Actually, the last thing they will do is beg. A supposed European Green Party quote appeared on The Twitter last night: "World leaders must defeat ISIS using the weapon that these terrorists fear most of all: peace talks." I have little doubt this must be a spoof but, given that Jeremy #JihadiJez Corbyn said OUT LOUD that he would not preside over a shoot to kill policy were he PM during the inevitable onslaught by the terrorism that has no religion, who knows to what depths of lunacy these crazy lefty clowns will dive?

Mind you, The Greens are on record as saying that climate change causes terrorism – is there any bandwagon upon whose bouncy flat-bed they will not leap? Meanwhile, I wonder to what extent David Cameron and his leetle Euro-chums will use the threat of further attacks to advance their own agenda. You know the open borders, anything goes, multi-culti-the-fuck-out-of-the-indigenous agenda of the EU. If this doesn’t advance the cause of ever-closer union – theenk of ze cheeldren! – I don’t know what does. Just wait – a Euro defence force and combined secret police with ultimate power of surveillance over your every waking moment is just around the corner.

I bet Jean-Claude Juncker is knocking one out over the footage from France; it’s better than his wildest wet dream and – right on cue, of course – comes the ‘don’t be hasty, keep the borders open, let’s not over-react, it’s what they WANT us to do’ rhetoric. But here’s the thing: you can’t actually defeat an enemy who actively wants to die. ISIS have no interest in opening peace talks, they only want us all dead or converted, preferably dead.

Your children have seen things you never saw; they live in a world where vicious beheadings and people being burned alive are almost everyday occurrences and are losing their power to shock. And yet even this morning I hear ‘world leaders’ urging people not to link this with the religion with which it is inextricably linked. Even the muslims are now showing their own deep-rooted bigotry by saying it is not a muslim thing it is ‘an Asian thing’ or ‘an African thing’. Multiculturalism has failed spectacularly and is carrying on failing.

It's what they want...

Whatever we do now, suicidal islam will likely not ever be eradicated and will resurge in time, just as it is at the moment. We can’t do nothing – if anything, doing nothing is exactly what they want us to do! - but given that the jihadis actively seek what they see as a glorious martyrdom for allah, annihilating them now, en-masse and before they even get a chance to scream allahu akbar, might be enough to put off those youngsters who are tempted by a life lived with the all-pervading stench of camel shit.

Reaper Man

I started writing this on Friday, since when events have overtaken us somewhat. But the good news, before the bad news came, was that so-called jihadi john – pieces be upon him – is believed to be incorporated into the landscape, courtesy of military technology in the form of a Reaper drone. The idea that you can vanquish an enemy at arm’s length has been a long sought-after goal of generals everywhere, especially when that enemy spreads fear through committing wanton, barbaric atrocities on living captives.

Drone attacks have become part of everyday language, much like smart weapons did during the Yugoslavian adventure and ‘boots on the ground’, has entered the national vocabulary as shorthand for having a nodding acquaintance with military lore and lexicon. We like it; it makes us feel important, knowledgeable, powerful and even the appeasers like Jeremy Corbyn, while mouthing their mealy bon-mots about justice by trial can’t help but feel that it is better to be on the side that can command such shock and awe than the one which will only receive these special gifts from the west.

In reaction to Paris, the Christians would have us turn the other cheek, but what next, when you’ve lost both cheeks? At which point on the hippy dippy continuum did the belief that everybody would one day be nice to each other take root, grow and become the orthodoxy? And for those not inclined to simply lay their necks on the chopping blocks there is the moral high ground which is claimed simply by getting there first. There is lots of chatter about how we must not be taken in, how we must not react in haste; how we mustn’t do exactly what ISIS want us to do, which is to fight back, apparently.

So, what do we do? Seriously, if all-out bombing followed by ground assault is not an option and we are incapable of defending ourselves at home unless we incarcerate everybody with a dark face, with or without the scowly beard, just what do we do? ‘Learning lessons’ appears to be a busted flush; school is very much out as regards foiling terror plots. And we can’t even use a hashtag or hold up a sign any more for fear of merciless ridicule... thank you Michelle Obama! But wait, the oracle that is Jean-Claude Juncker says the answer to all of this is yet more of the open borders nonsense that is partly to blame. Defeat ISIS by making it even easier for their brethren to enter the kaffirs’ kingdom and plunder its benefits.

Slough... now.

How seriously deluded and wedded to an ideology do you have to be that you put the safety, the very lives, of your citizens at risk before admitting that ideology is fallible. That is surely just as flawed and fatally dogmatic as is fanatical islam. We need a better answer. As long ago as 1937 John Betjeman wrote of Slough: “Come friendly bombs and rain on Slough. It isn’t fit for humans now.” If only we had a reaper drone so smart it could take out only the enemies of the people; target a jihadi on his prayer mat so precisely that barely six square feet of scorched earth mark the spot. If we ever make such a weapon, people like Juncker might want to be very careful what they wish for.

Done Deal

I learned about negotiation the hard way. Trying to sell my crappy old Honda 250 around about 1979, the fat greasy old bloke (he was probably about thirty) offered me £150 cash. I was a student, this was a fortune, but £100 shy of what I thought it was worth. “If you come back later it’ll be £100” was his response to my feeble attempt to suggest I’d get better elsewhere. I walked home, grateful for the much-needed cash, yet still resentful of the manner in which I had acquired it. I pretended to mates that, a) I had got what I asked for and, b) that I had stood my ground against stiff resolve.

When it comes to David Cameron’s fantasy renegotiation of Britain’s membership of the European Union, others far more informed than I have offered their gloomy analysis; here’s Toby Young in the Daily Telegraph: With the notable exception of David Lidington described on PM as ‘Europe Minister’, who could not or would not answer direct questions, absolutely nobody in the public eye appears to believe he will achieve anything other than the square root of fuck-all. (Here: 13 minutes in.)

At least – unlike David Cameron – I didn’t walk into the bike shop every Saturday and tell them how desperate I was for cash before turning up with my wheels and a begging bowl. None of Cameron’s ‘demands’ are significant, except whereby he reveals that in tentatively, indirectly asking for the maybe, a little bit, return of the supremacy of the British Parliament over British affairs, he is flat out admitting that we are entirely controlled legally by the EU. At least I got some money for my bike – all he is going to get (and it’s all he deserves) is a kick in the arse for his insolence.

The ONLY negotiating position had to be, from the outset, that we are leaving the club we can no longer afford to be a member of. Only if you offer us the earth will we even consider remaining. And even then you will have to grovel for it, pay us reparation and let British sides win the EUFA league for the next five straight years. Oh and suck our collective dick, because we had our fingers crossed when we shook on that little deal you interbred, Teutonic, frog-munching, sprout-mangling mongrels...

I have in my hand... absolutely sod all...

The point of a negotiation, as in any trade, is that each side has something the other side wants. And each side has demands in excess of what they will accept, together with an absolute, walk-away, red line below which no deal is possible. What Cameron should be demanding is effective British rule over the whole of the EU and his forget-it position should be if Merkel and co even blink at the demand. Because, let’s face it, none of the concessions he is pleading for are even up for grabs, so he may as well go for broke. What we are getting, however, is pure politics as theatre, nothing more.

And if what it takes for him to genuinely leave the table, as opposed to flouncing out just like in rehearsals, is for him to be tarred and feathered, trussed up like a Christmas turkey, bleeding like stuck pig and carried back to Westminster on a roasting pole in his complete humiliation then so be it. Few in British life would be particularly concerned. Those who want out are resolute, as are those who want in; they both made up their minds long ago. Which means the matter will be decided by the votes of those who can be persuaded; in other words, those who have nothing to negotiate. Does that sound like a good deal to you?

Students. Still revolting after all these years

The butt hurt is strong on US campuses as the University of Missouri System president buckles to minority offence-seeking and calls it a day. Hunger strikes, for fuck’s sake? Really? Whatever happened to burning bras and walking around with misspelled placards and chanting scansion-free slogans? University used to represent centres of not just book-learning, but of real expansion of the mind; an opening up to the possibilities, not a closing down of choice.

Civilisation owes much to the university system. The glorious and occasionally clashing coalescences of art and engineering, humanities and cold, hard science has always been a tool for refinement, invention, thought and progress. But now there are dark clouds gathering and far from the liberating young minds universities are closing them down. No less a commentator than Roger Scruton has denounced US campuses for their illiberal, rule-heavy adherence to the new dogma – and it is increasingly happening here. Is there no offence so slight as to let it go un-marched against? Surely freedom of thought and speech – freedom itself - is far more important than the new prize, freedom from offence?

In the 70s we laughed at the more extreme demands of the various special interest groups; the Women’s Society, the various political oddities, the obscure ‘Free the Whatever’ clubs, the fanciful Nazi hunters and dismissed them all as free to hold their views but thankful their numbers were so small. Now adherence to every offence-seeking principle appears to be almost compulsory and without a hint of wry recognition of how ludicrous it sounds, some demand ‘safe spaces’, retreats to soothe them should they be ‘triggered’, which far from denoting any actual harm, means no more than being exposed to views with which they disagree. Having their idiocy indulged by creating safe space? We used to call that going back home to mummy.

This ridiculous state of affairs can be traced all the way back to early school and the nurturing of special little soldiers for the social revolution which is stifling progress for so many. The privilege of attaining a university place used to mean a way up and out of poverty for many working class kids. But why struggle to get ahead when you can have a clap-happy primary school system hand you your very own, individual special needs label and lead the charge to denounce all who don’t hold your entirely natural juvenile viewpoint of being the centre of the universe? And there may be compensation involved. The infection is widespread and its roots are deep; we need an alternative.

End this misery!

We should seek to return education to those who need it, not those who exploit it for their own political ends. There are enough playground politicians out there without indulging that predilection from the outset. Oddly enough we used to turn out perfectly decent, non-spitting, non-violent, non-offence-orientated citizens when we just stuck to, you know, teaching subject matter and not inculcating ideology. Surely it’s time to just stop recognising and pandering to all those differences and get back to reality. Life’s hard, then you die; here endeth today’s lesson.

Any Questions?

Just because an idea is, or can be made, popular, it doesn’t make it either achievable or true. Among ideas that sound wonderful are: give everybody a meaningful job or a meaningful life, for that matter. Pay everybody enough not to want for any essential need. Stop people being cruel to other people. Educate all children so that a real university place is an option. Let women control fifty percent of everything (instead, presumably, of the mere 90% they already control). End slavery, homelessness, starvation and climate change. Oh and prevent lovely fluffy kittens from growing up to be grumpy cats.

On Any Questions last week I heard repeated the idiot mantra that the refugee crisis was as a result of the first world’s inability to counteract climate change. As if droughts and floods and famine were all our fault. Really? Even if you take the bible largely as the work of fiction it is, there are still historical records of droughts and famine, wars and pestilence in the old world as well as the Old Testament. You’re surely not going to blame all that on global warming? The audience responded warmly to every knee-jerk left wing simpleton response while resolutely staying silent whenever a pragmatic view was offered.

The lefty commentators on the panel were quick to brand every current government policy as being entirely ideological. Everything the hated Tories are doing – including all the things Labour promised to do – is a dogmatic attack on the poor. Austerity is not a case of living within our means, rather it is some calculated right-wing plot to starve everybody to death. Presumably the obesity epidemic is an allergic reaction to hunger? In the idiot world we have created I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody actually posited that as a rational explanation for the explosion of plus-sized infants.

To judge by the audience’s juvenile lapping up of nice-but-dim rhetoric the propaganda has done its job and spurred on by the crowd-mind they cheered ever more fanciful fictions of the harm caused by ‘the far right’ by which I imagine they mean David Cameron. Is it so inconceivable that Conservatives want a better world, too? And that their proposal to get everybody to build it together is as worthy, if not more worthy than compelling one half of the population to forever pay for the other half? But no, if it’s ideology you want you need look no further than the left who have clung fiercely to their little red books and the foolish refusal to recognise difference.

You want equality? Come and get it...

Equality, they cry, unaware that every heavy-handed piece of equalities legislation creates not wings for the underdogs but millstones for achievers. Just as socialist redistribution of wealth tends to make everybody poorer, shoehorning everybody into a one-size-fits-all jelly mould increases the sum total of mediocrity. You want women to be equal? Then stop whining about there being seven men and only two women in the new passport design; although they have a point – they should at least have included Margaret Thatcher. Oh, but that’s the wrong kind of woman, isn’t it? I suppose they mean people like ‘Dr’ Jack Monroe... although apparently she’s not a woman any more. Confusing isn’t it?

Briefing Room...

It’s been a busy old week and forgive me, Twitter, for I have sinned. It has been three days since my last blog. For my penance I made a concerted effort to try and discover what has been going on in the world while I have been busy earning a crust and my, have you been busy; I hardly know where to start. Maybe I should begin with a roundup of what I’ve learned so far...

The Million Mask March of a few hundred infantile malcontents has been chucking fireworks and traffic cones around like the big, stupid, spoiled brats they are. More aeroplanes have been falling out of the sky over sandy countries. Various western countries have been raising alarums over border controls and the plagues of cockroach-like humanity that floods through their colander-like, fading, dotted lines on the Euro map. Junior doctors are considering going on strike, they are probably selling Channel 4, Piers Morgan is still an egregious tosspot and David Cameron is... well, I couldn’t really be arsed to find out.

But it did remind me of his personal crusade to make obsequious genuflexion at the feet of the goddess Merkel appear to the outside as if he is making a genuine attempt to negotiate a new deal for Britain, even as he crosses the fingers of both hands. It is so plain that, whatever he says, his endless pontificating on the likelihood of getting a favourable settlement is mere chaff in the wind. It looks impressive for a moment, but disperses into so much nothing in moments. But oh, the war of words!

Is he being paid, like the lawyers of old, by the word? At a recent cabinet meeting, in which he decided to tackle the Eurosceptics in his ranks he recently made a speech of such overstuffed pomposity, extolling the virtues of life within the EU embrace which ran for over two hours. From the start of the session all the way up to elevenses he riffed without notes – Ed Miliband would have been proud – about how Britain was bigger in Europe, could punch above its weight, could work with friends and close allies to build a better world and yes, he said, could better assist the humanitarian crisis which it was Britain’s duty to ameliorate.

Nearing the end, however, he was rattled when Iain Duncan Smith stood up, turned on his heel and walked out of the briefing room to the utter amazement of most of the assembled throng. Cameron spluttered a little but picked up where he’d left off and continued berating his bastard colleagues for daring to entertain the possibility of Brexit.

Keeping the cabinet on-message...

Afterwards, DC went in search of IDS for an explanation. Finding he had left the building he instead confronted his PA at the Department of Work & Pensions. “I have to say,” he said “ I found it a little disconcerting, to say the least, when it happened.” The aide cleared her throat and replied, “Oh, don’t take it personally, Prime Minister, it wasn’t a reflection on you... Iain has been walking in his sleep since he was a boy.”

Battsby Bernard is unwell

Normal service will be resumed once I get a sodding minute to myself.

Don't go away.

Standing Room Only

Zoe Williams thinks the UK can accommodate millions more people and that we should have more compassion for the plight of our fellow man in the form of refugees. Obviously she wasn’t commuting to work at six o’clock in the morning, negotiating roads filled with killing machines all trying to get to their destinations early enough to avoid the greater masses and find an affordable parking space within an hour’s walk of the office. I suppose when you have the luxury of working from a keyboard, at hours to suit your cherished and privileged work-life balance it is easy to ignore the sheer tide of ‘humanity’ that daily slogs from bed to treadmill.

To give her a modicum of credit she doesn’t go for the ‘all the world’s population could fit on the Isle of Wight’ claptrap and she does at least acknowledge that we need to leave a little bit of the countryside unspoiled but still she says “Nevertheless, the potential here is vast – were productive industry nurtured, developed but underpopulated areas would have jobs for people to move for.” But then she spoils it by invoking the Marxist within: “Were development undertaken systematically and with a social purpose, rather than up-against-a-wall and on the cheap, population growth could be welcomed rather than dreaded.”

Hmmm... So, spend money on developing industry in less well populated areas such as the north, for instance? Maybe, you know, create a ‘Northern Powerhouse’ – oh I bet Zoe daily roots for George Osborne’s plan. Maybe she hasn’t noticed it yet, but the sort of people who have the creativity and wit and élan to build businesses based on loveliness are somewhat outnumbered by the lumpen proletariat. It is a sad reflection of human nature that the majority, for all that they will complain otherwise, are only really suited to the drudge jobs that mass industry brings.

Zoe says “Immigrants have been successfully, egregiously framed as a threat. All sources of immigration have become one. The debate refuses to distinguish between a student and an engineer and a cockle picker and a refugee.”  But, the exact same lack of distinction has been made by all the lefty academics arguing for more immigration: that it is an unalloyed good, that it is a force for betterment. As always they want it both ways; allow in those hundreds of thousands of unskilled workers, who depress the wages of our own unskilled who are bound in welfare and do it in the name of diversity and the improvement of humanity.

Presumably she would have us invest in building from scratch whole new communities in green belt areas, provided with roads and hospitals and schools and jobs and fun and laughter and fill them with new arrivals? For it is certain that were that possible, we would have already done it for our own population. The evidence is very much that, apart from centres of education and selective expertise, immigrants are largely dumped in areas where they simply displace the indigenous who then resent them. She flies the flag for enrichment and diversity from the ivory tower of one who only meets the minority of incomers who bring admirable qualities and complains that those who oppose mass immigration are deliberately skewing the argument against.

Room for one more?

“The result is that we will now stand by and watch people freeze and, in some cases, literally rot in makeshift European camps, because they’re probably “economic” migrants, and even though we know they’re not, we can’t have them because they take up space and we’re too tiny. The deliberate lack of sophistication has led, inexorably, to a lack of humanity, sitting on the terrain like a toxic fog, choking any pride we could reasonably take in our national character. Those purporting to protect Britain from the outside threat of the stranger are actually destroying its values from within.” Or maybe those destroying Britain from within are doing so by villainising all who live here and want to preserve our own values before taking the considerable gamble of importing unquantifiable future social problems? The argument for immigration is absolutely not helped by telling those who were born here and can’t find a job or afford a decent place to live without being on welfare that we can easily take in millions more.

Angry Monday

‘Experts agree’. ‘Top academic reports’. ‘Guru advises’. ‘Government Czar appointed’. ‘Think tank recommends.’ Tip-top, expert, Tsar-Czar guru supremo is pleased to announce the outcomes of a five year study into research of findings in accumulated data gathering originating from diverse sources amalgamated to synergise incentive-laden, issue-based, evidential prophecies appertaining to essential societal demographics, which are essential to the demographics observed in society in the hyper-speed, cyber-enabled future... going forward. Or is that all just bollocks?

And the result of all this expertise and good advice? The west has infantilised its younger generations to the extent that never mind telling good advice from bad advice, they don’t even grasp the difference between good and bad itself. Individual reason and responsibility takes second place to collective, central planning, whether from actual governments or from self- appointed watchdogs, trained to sniff out the mildest offence and turn it into crime. And it matters not whether you understand a single mangled sentence of it.

Sexism, gender-identity politics, the race industry, equality enforcement, the Holy Grail and wholly misinformed deity of diversity... In the war of ‘ideologies for every occasion’ is it any wonder we so frequently witness blue-on blue attacks such as when Germaine Greer is mauled by feminists and otherwise free-marketeers plead the case for the EU? For fear of the nouveau offence of, er, causing offence we can’t police actual physical and sexual assault on the genuinely vulnerable. For fear of judgement for making the idle less well-off we turn to making working people poorer still. The first of the gods – Chaos – must be cackling on high.

And in the midst of all this confusion ordinary people are supposed to make sense of events and carry on with their lives without fearing disastrous change as a direct result of governments they think they had a choice in electing? We old curmudgeons are attacked for saying it was better before, but I’m sure that isn’t just memory playing up. Once, a labourer could earn enough to keep a small family fed and housed. Once, all except the very slowest of children could leave school able to read and write and get a job without having to send out a thousand CVs. Once, the police were a respected and visible part of every neighbourhood and malingerers got short shrift from bosses and doctors alike.

Now, social, health and emergency services workers are insulted and assaulted on a regular basis. The nuclear family is derided and side-lined as any and all combinations of LGBT parenting models are encouraged and facilitated. School-leavers are abandoned in favour of imported low-grade workers and in the name of all that expert intelligentsia shit we continue to import jihadis by the truckload; streaming across the borders and screaming for our annihilation.

This, they tell us, brings us nothing but good...

In what he imagines to be a popular statement, Philip Hammond has said that the UK has been late to recognise extremism. I don’t know what you lot in successive governments thought you were doing but we saw through the bullshit of you and all your advisors many years ago. Fuck you, Phil. Fuck all of your experts and fuck all of your think tanks. After all, it’s what you have been doing to us for decades.